1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a feeding apparatus which aligns and conveys bottles or tableware such as dishes or cups, etc., made by a bottle making machine or other making machines into a lehr or drying furnace from a conveyer.
2. Description of Related Art
In general, a stacker is used to feed products, such as glass bottles or glass tableware, etc., in a manufacturing line thereof. The stacker successively feeds, for example, a large number of bottles aligned on a front conveyer located in front of the lehr into the latter in a direction perpendicular to the direction of the movement of the front conveyer in synchronization with the movement of the front conveyer. To this end, it is necessary to synchronously move the stacker in at least two orthogonal directions in combination.
The movement of the stacker in predetermined directions is carried out, for example, by a cam mechanism.
In such a known feeding apparatus, the movement of the stacker must be varied or controlled depending on the kind of the bottles to be fed or an arrangement (direction of alignment, etc.) of the bottles within the lehr. To vary the movement of the stacker, it is necessary to replace the cam with another cam. In view of a large variety of products (tableware, etc.), the replacement of the cam is troublesome and requires long time.
The assignee of the present application has proposed a feeding apparatus which comprises a base frame, a first movable frame which is moved in backward and forward by a first actuator, a second movable frame which is moved in right and left directions by a second actuator, a third movable frame which is moved up and down by a third actuator, and a pusher provided on the third movable frame.
In this proposed apparatus, since the stacker is independently moved in the three orthogonal directions (back and forward, right and left, and up and down) by the respective actuators independent from each other, a desired complex movement can be easily obtained. However, since the movement of the stacker in a diagonal direction is realized by a combination of the movement thereof in the two or three orthogonal directions, no smooth movement of the stacker can be executed. Furthermore, the provision of the three actuators not only makes the whole feeding apparatus heavy and expensive, but also increases the outputs of motors to drive the actuators.